A bipartisan group of Senators wants to extend the space station to 2030

You can't simply extend the ISS through 2030 by declaration. Modules and systems were designed within finite lifespan. Things like airlocks have a maximum safe number of cycles. Boeing the primary contractor has only certified the stations primary system through 2028. Systems break and wear out. The portion of payload mass devoted to spare parts is rising each year.

Congress is setting NASA up for a failure, one they will turn around and blame NASA for when someone is hurt or killed.

There is also the small issue of the Russians. They haven't committed to a ISS presence beyond 2024 and with commercial resupply and commercial crew killing their ability to sell Soyuz and Progress flights their costs are rising while their space budget and revenue offsets from NASA are falling. We have already excluded them from Gateway and our lunar ambitions (not saying that is bad) so they have no real reason to work with us at this point in order to gain future "business".

I am all for maintaining a presence in LEO through 2030 or 2130 but there needs to be money to address the real challenges involved with the ISS is getting long in the tooth and is essentially two incomplete stations bolted together and at least our half can't work independently as-is.

Could we just put another airlock compartment on the existing one and leave the old doors open? I realize that's only one of myriad problems, but lots of things (like nuclear power plants) get their lives lengthened beyond the design.

Frankly, 2024 is not a bad decommissioning date, but I expect that it will be extended. As Statistical mentioned, elements of the station are not rated beyond 2028, so that seems a more likely date. Besides, with all of the heavy class launch vehicles available or expected to be operational by 2024, the construction of a new station by 2028 is not unrealistic. Except... they had better start working on a final ISS 2 design and module construction...

Are you sure the first module hasn't been built (and partially disassembled and is being rebuilt again)? What else to do with Starship Mk. 1 once its useful testing life has been lived? Send it up on a booster to live forever in the sky. It could make a pretty decent cargo storage area or something, right?

Can one of the astronomers tell me if the asteroid survey is limited by aperture size for dim signals or does it just need a massive field of view? Certainly the massive field of view could be satisfied by a constellation of smaller telescopes. Can we assemble a segmented mirror on-orbit to make a larger aperture instrument? JWST is folded, right? Is it any different to mate two things? I'm trying to imagine how one might leverage cheap reusable launch vehicles to meet the demand for an asteroid hunter space telescope.

NEOSM (née NEOCam) has just a 50cm mirror. That should be big enough to find most of the NEOs larger than 140m.

Yes, that's why I'm saying that they will save face and keep the illusion of still being an space power using the Soyuz to send their astronauts.

Russians buying a hab from Bigelow and launching it on an American rocket would save no face. There is zero chance of that happening. Another country might Russia won't.

That's not how I propose that they could easily get a new station in orbit, if they want. They won't save face from the Bigelow station, indeed, they will discretely buy the Bigelow habitat (or build one, AFAIK their biggest patents that came from NASA have expired) and launch it on the private company rocket from a certain South-African & Canadian citizen (I bet this is how it would be shown on Russian medias).

But how they will save face and keep the pretenses of still be an space superpower is by showing off every single astronaut launch on their trustworthy and very Russian Soyuz rocket.

After the Russians dicked him around about selling decommissioned ICBMs for his Mars stunt, I don't think Elon is going to be selling any launch services to the Russians any time soon - or ever.

Can one of the astronomers tell me if the asteroid survey is limited by aperture size for dim signals or does it just need a massive field of view? Certainly the massive field of view could be satisfied by a constellation of smaller telescopes. Can we assemble a segmented mirror on-orbit to make a larger aperture instrument? JWST is folded, right? Is it any different to mate two things? I'm trying to imagine how one might leverage cheap reusable launch vehicles to meet the demand for an asteroid hunter space telescope.

NEOSM (née NEOCam) has just a 50cm mirror. That should be big enough to find most of the NEOs larger than 140m.

Half a meter main - let's figure 1m total size including folded solar arrays, etc. Naively, I can fit 33 such cross sections into a 7m diameter. Let's figure we can stack that 3 deep. So you can launch ~100 such telescopes into space per Starship launch.

Can one of the astronomers tell me if the asteroid survey is limited by aperture size for dim signals or does it just need a massive field of view? Certainly the massive field of view could be satisfied by a constellation of smaller telescopes. Can we assemble a segmented mirror on-orbit to make a larger aperture instrument? JWST is folded, right? Is it any different to mate two things? I'm trying to imagine how one might leverage cheap reusable launch vehicles to meet the demand for an asteroid hunter space telescope.

NEOSM (née NEOCam) has just a 50cm mirror. That should be big enough to find most of the NEOs larger than 140m.

Half a meter main - let's figure 1m total size including folded solar arrays, etc. Naively, I can fit 33 such cross sections into a 7m diameter. Let's figure we can stack that 3 deep. So you can launch ~100 such telescopes into space per Starship launch.

How good are we at sparse array telescopes? And specifically sparse array telescopes in orbit? Or would we need to substantial work, or even just booms to hard-connect the sub-telescopes?

Can one of the astronomers tell me if the asteroid survey is limited by aperture size for dim signals or does it just need a massive field of view? Certainly the massive field of view could be satisfied by a constellation of smaller telescopes. Can we assemble a segmented mirror on-orbit to make a larger aperture instrument? JWST is folded, right? Is it any different to mate two things? I'm trying to imagine how one might leverage cheap reusable launch vehicles to meet the demand for an asteroid hunter space telescope.

NEOSM (née NEOCam) has just a 50cm mirror. That should be big enough to find most of the NEOs larger than 140m.

Half a meter main - let's figure 1m total size including folded solar arrays, etc. Naively, I can fit 33 such cross sections into a 7m diameter. Let's figure we can stack that 3 deep. So you can launch ~100 such telescopes into space per Starship launch.

Well, the whole spacecraft is 1300kg. I don't know what the dimensions are, but it has a sunshade (so that it can operate without cryogen). It also needs to go to Earth-Sun L1. You certainly could fit a number of them in Starship.

You can't simply extend the ISS through 2030 by declaration. Modules and systems were designed within finite lifespan. Things like airlocks have a maximum safe number of cycles. Boeing the primary contractor has only certified the stations primary system through 2028. Systems break and wear out. The portion of payload mass devoted to spare parts is rising each year.

Congress is setting NASA up for a failure, one they will turn around and blame NASA for when someone is hurt or killed.

There is also the small issue of the Russians. They haven't committed to a ISS presence beyond 2024 and with commercial resupply and commercial crew killing their ability to sell Soyuz and Progress flights their costs are rising while their space budget and revenue offsets from NASA are falling. We have already excluded them from Gateway and our lunar ambitions (not saying that is bad) so they have no real reason to work with us at this point in order to gain future "business".

I am all for maintaining a presence in LEO through 2030 or 2130 but there needs to be money to address the real challenges involved with the ISS is getting long in the tooth and is essentially two incomplete stations bolted together and at least our half can't work independently as-is.

Could we just put another airlock compartment on the existing one and leave the old doors open? I realize that's only one of myriad problems, but lots of things (like nuclear power plants) get their lives lengthened beyond the design.

The airlock doesn't have a docking port on the exterior hatch. You could however replace the airlock with a replacement airlock. Need to come up with a way to get new airlock on station and a disposal/deorbit plan for the old airlock although temporarily you could likely attach it to any of the common berthing adapters and just leave it closed.

Can one of the astronomers tell me if the asteroid survey is limited by aperture size for dim signals or does it just need a massive field of view? Certainly the massive field of view could be satisfied by a constellation of smaller telescopes. Can we assemble a segmented mirror on-orbit to make a larger aperture instrument? JWST is folded, right? Is it any different to mate two things? I'm trying to imagine how one might leverage cheap reusable launch vehicles to meet the demand for an asteroid hunter space telescope.

NEOSM (née NEOCam) has just a 50cm mirror. That should be big enough to find most of the NEOs larger than 140m.

Half a meter main - let's figure 1m total size including folded solar arrays, etc. Naively, I can fit 33 such cross sections into a 7m diameter. Let's figure we can stack that 3 deep. So you can launch ~100 such telescopes into space per Starship launch.

How good are we at sparse array telescopes? And specifically sparse array telescopes in orbit? Or would we need to substantial work, or even just booms to hard-connect the sub-telescopes?

I wasn't envisioning them being used together. I was imaging a sky survey where each telescope is looking at a cone of only a few degrees but as an ensemble they can cover a very large fraction of the sky.

You can't simply extend the ISS through 2030 by declaration. Modules and systems were designed within finite lifespan. Things like airlocks have a maximum safe number of cycles. Boeing the primary contractor has only certified the stations primary system through 2028. Systems break and wear out. The portion of payload mass devoted to spare parts is rising each year.

Congress is setting NASA up for a failure, one they will turn around and blame NASA for when someone is hurt or killed.

There is also the small issue of the Russians. They haven't committed to a ISS presence beyond 2024 and with commercial resupply and commercial crew killing their ability to sell Soyuz and Progress flights their costs are rising while their space budget and revenue offsets from NASA are falling. We have already excluded them from Gateway and our lunar ambitions (not saying that is bad) so they have no real reason to work with us at this point in order to gain future "business".

I am all for maintaining a presence in LEO through 2030 or 2130 but there needs to be money to address the real challenges involved with the ISS is getting long in the tooth and is essentially two incomplete stations bolted together and at least our half can't work independently as-is.

Could we just put another airlock compartment on the existing one and leave the old doors open? I realize that's only one of myriad problems, but lots of things (like nuclear power plants) get their lives lengthened beyond the design.

The airlock doesn't have a docking port on the exterior hatch. You could however replace the airlock with a replacement airlock. Need to come up with a way to get new airlock on station and a disposal/deorbit plan for the old airlock although temporarily you could likely attach it to any of the common berthing adapters and just leave it closed.

Ah, the eva airlock. That could be replaced by putting a new compartment with an eva airlock and docking adapter on any of the existing docking adapter, right? Then just don't open the old one.

There's lots of other issues so it's probably not worth getting too tied up in one problem.

Can one of the astronomers tell me if the asteroid survey is limited by aperture size for dim signals or does it just need a massive field of view? Certainly the massive field of view could be satisfied by a constellation of smaller telescopes. Can we assemble a segmented mirror on-orbit to make a larger aperture instrument? JWST is folded, right? Is it any different to mate two things? I'm trying to imagine how one might leverage cheap reusable launch vehicles to meet the demand for an asteroid hunter space telescope.

NEOSM (née NEOCam) has just a 50cm mirror. That should be big enough to find most of the NEOs larger than 140m.

Half a meter main - let's figure 1m total size including folded solar arrays, etc. Naively, I can fit 33 such cross sections into a 7m diameter. Let's figure we can stack that 3 deep. So you can launch ~100 such telescopes into space per Starship launch.

Well, the whole spacecraft is 1300kg. I don't know what the dimensions are, but it has a sunshade (so that it can operate without cryogen). It also needs to go to Earth-Sun L1. You certainly could fit a number of them in Starship.

Didn't realize we were talking about passively cooled IR detectors. Yeah, that's going to have to get away from the earth. It would be better if we could just crank the electrical supply to 11 and actively cool. But that might require high temperature radiator tech that hasn't been developed yet.

Can one of the astronomers tell me if the asteroid survey is limited by aperture size for dim signals or does it just need a massive field of view? Certainly the massive field of view could be satisfied by a constellation of smaller telescopes. Can we assemble a segmented mirror on-orbit to make a larger aperture instrument? JWST is folded, right? Is it any different to mate two things? I'm trying to imagine how one might leverage cheap reusable launch vehicles to meet the demand for an asteroid hunter space telescope.

NEOSM (née NEOCam) has just a 50cm mirror. That should be big enough to find most of the NEOs larger than 140m.

Half a meter main - let's figure 1m total size including folded solar arrays, etc. Naively, I can fit 33 such cross sections into a 7m diameter. Let's figure we can stack that 3 deep. So you can launch ~100 such telescopes into space per Starship launch.

Well, the whole spacecraft is 1300kg. I don't know what the dimensions are, but it has a sunshade (so that it can operate without cryogen). It also needs to go to Earth-Sun L1. You certainly could fit a number of them in Starship.

Didn't realize we were talking about passively cooled IR detectors. Yeah, that's going to have to get away from the earth. It would be better if we could just crank the electrical supply to 11 and actively cool. But that might require high temperature radiator tech that hasn't been developed yet.

The other option is to use a cryo-cooled detector. The main downside is mission duration, but if you're mass-producing them, it might not matter.

What is it about Texas politicians that think facial accessories make them: smarter, most statesmanlike, etc? I'm looking at you Calgary Cruz and Three things I can't remember Perry.

I think Ted grew the beard solely to make himself look less punchable. I've noticed the number of "most punchable face" jokes (both on Ars and elsewhere) has decreased dramatically since he added the facial hair.

Can one of the astronomers tell me if the asteroid survey is limited by aperture size for dim signals or does it just need a massive field of view? Certainly the massive field of view could be satisfied by a constellation of smaller telescopes. Can we assemble a segmented mirror on-orbit to make a larger aperture instrument? JWST is folded, right? Is it any different to mate two things? I'm trying to imagine how one might leverage cheap reusable launch vehicles to meet the demand for an asteroid hunter space telescope.

NEOSM (née NEOCam) has just a 50cm mirror. That should be big enough to find most of the NEOs larger than 140m.

Half a meter main - let's figure 1m total size including folded solar arrays, etc. Naively, I can fit 33 such cross sections into a 7m diameter. Let's figure we can stack that 3 deep. So you can launch ~100 such telescopes into space per Starship launch.

Well, the whole spacecraft is 1300kg. I don't know what the dimensions are, but it has a sunshade (so that it can operate without cryogen). It also needs to go to Earth-Sun L1. You certainly could fit a number of them in Starship.

Didn't realize we were talking about passively cooled IR detectors. Yeah, that's going to have to get away from the earth. It would be better if we could just crank the electrical supply to 11 and actively cool. But that might require high temperature radiator tech that hasn't been developed yet.

The other option is to use a cryo-cooled detector. The main downside is mission duration, but if you're mass-producing them, it might not matter.

If SpaceX can drop off a dozen or so every Starlink launch you might accept only a two year lifespan.

NEOSM (née NEOCam) has just a 50cm mirror. That should be big enough to find most of the NEOs larger than 140m.

Half a meter main - let's figure 1m total size including folded solar arrays, etc. Naively, I can fit 33 such cross sections into a 7m diameter. Let's figure we can stack that 3 deep. So you can launch ~100 such telescopes into space per Starship launch.

Well, the whole spacecraft is 1300kg. I don't know what the dimensions are, but it has a sunshade (so that it can operate without cryogen). It also needs to go to Earth-Sun L1. You certainly could fit a number of them in Starship.

Didn't realize we were talking about passively cooled IR detectors. Yeah, that's going to have to get away from the earth. It would be better if we could just crank the electrical supply to 11 and actively cool. But that might require high temperature radiator tech that hasn't been developed yet.

The other option is to use a cryo-cooled detector. The main downside is mission duration, but if you're mass-producing them, it might not matter.

If SpaceX can drop off a dozen or so every Starlink launch you might accept only a two year lifespan.

I believe the idea is that you need to look outward, to pick up the reflection of things further out than you, for increased sensitivity. You want to be inside Earth's orbit, so you can see things in Earth's orbit. You want to remain close to Earth for fast communications. That restricts you to ESL1.

To me planetary defense means defending the planet from some extraterrestrial threat, so that means the govts of the world are aware that humans are not alone in the Universe and that the aliens are/may be hostile.

Space is big and full of planets, who knows what's really out there or if interstellar travel is really just a pipe dream. But, space is also full of things moving very fast. Things that could hit a burgeoning planet and end an era of reptilian life, for example.

I believe the idea is that you need to look outward, to pick up the reflection of things further out than you, for increased sensitivity. You want to be inside Earth's orbit, so you can see things in Earth's orbit. You want to remain close to Earth for fast communications. That restricts you to ESL1.

You're looking for emission if you're using IR telescopes. If you were looking for reflection you'd look in the visible.

I wish it could be possible to fasten a booster to the ISS and crash it on the Moon to use it as a source of materials. It's such a waste to burn it in the atmosphere.

Definitely keep it going now, but at the end of its life in Earth orbit why not put it at a Lagrange point or in lunar orbit? You would need a lot of ion thrusters to give it a gradual acceleration (or a lot of string to cross brace everything, especially the solar panels if you used a chemical rocket) but it represents a huge amount of potential energy compared with launching from the ground and even if the contents would be obsolete, the basic structure will not have aged and could be repurposed. Probably best to remodel in leo and then send it out. Deorbitting would indeed be such a waste!

I believe the idea is that you need to look outward, to pick up the reflection of things further out than you, for increased sensitivity. You want to be inside Earth's orbit, so you can see things in Earth's orbit. You want to remain close to Earth for fast communications. That restricts you to ESL1.

You're looking for emission if you're using IR telescopes. If you were looking for reflection you'd look in the visible.

Reflection or emission, you want to pick up the bright/hot side facing the Sun. I can't come up with any other reason why you would want to sit at L1 for this.

I believe the idea is that you need to look outward, to pick up the reflection of things further out than you, for increased sensitivity. You want to be inside Earth's orbit, so you can see things in Earth's orbit. You want to remain close to Earth for fast communications. That restricts you to ESL1.

You're looking for emission if you're using IR telescopes. If you were looking for reflection you'd look in the visible.

Reflection or emission, you want to pick up the bright/hot side facing the Sun. I can't come up with any other reason why you would want to sit at L1 for this.

They've got to get away from the surface of the earth to avoid the thermal load from its reflected light. At which point you've got to choose somewhere to go. Any of the Lagrange points allow constant communication with earth. L1 is inside and allows you to see the hot spots as you suggest so maybe there's some small advantage there. However, most of the asteroids are usually outside the earth's orbit most of the time or you can see their inside face when looking across the orbital plane. Maybe L1 is just the cheapest Lagrange point to get to from a delta-v budget. I don't know.

I wish it could be possible to fasten a booster to the ISS and crash it on the Moon to use it as a source of materials. It's such a waste to burn it in the atmosphere.

Definitely keep it going now, but at the end of its life in Earth orbit why not put it at a Lagrange point or in lunar orbit? You would need a lot of ion thrusters to give it a gradual acceleration (or a lot of string to cross brace everything, especially the solar panels if you used a chemical rocket) but it represents a huge amount of potential energy compared with launching from the ground and even if the contents would be obsolete, the basic structure will not have aged and could be repurposed. Probably best to remodel in leo and then send it out. Deorbitting would indeed be such a waste!

Because we are *nowhere* near the tech needed to make use of space junk. This isn't a 1979 Ford Fiesta where you can grab a wrench and pull off the alternator. It is full of unique bits bolted to other unique bits with parts that are pushing their design life. Big parts, like seals and radiators. Our EVA tech at present is limited to carefully unbolting and bolting things (kinda like the SLS now that I think of it).

Personally, I think we should be working on a junkyard in orbit precisely to get those techniques and technologies down, but as been pointed out countless times here, we're much closer to just building on earth and (now much more cheaply) boosting stuff in orbit than actually refurbing the Rocinante.

I believe the idea is that you need to look outward, to pick up the reflection of things further out than you, for increased sensitivity. You want to be inside Earth's orbit, so you can see things in Earth's orbit. You want to remain close to Earth for fast communications. That restricts you to ESL1.

You're looking for emission if you're using IR telescopes. If you were looking for reflection you'd look in the visible.

Reflection or emission, you want to pick up the bright/hot side facing the Sun. I can't come up with any other reason why you would want to sit at L1 for this.

They've got to get away from the surface of the earth to avoid the thermal load from its reflected light. At which point you've got to choose somewhere to go. Any of the Lagrange points allow constant communication with earth. L1 is inside and allows you to see the hot spots as you suggest so maybe there's some small advantage there. However, most of the asteroids are usually outside the earth's orbit most of the time or you can see their inside face when looking across the orbital plane. Maybe L1 is just the cheapest Lagrange point to get to from a delta-v budget. I don't know.

The further out you go, the more costly data transmission gets. If it were only the thermal loads, it would be a lot easier to just drift about in some HEO.

I wish it could be possible to fasten a booster to the ISS and crash it on the Moon to use it as a source of materials. It's such a waste to burn it in the atmosphere.

Perhaps not to the moon, but it should be possible to raise ISS to a higher orbit or even a Lagrange point (though this risks collisions more so and destroying your components) toi be kept around as salvage. Attaching additional maneuvering elements and making it basically a large satellite/scrap yard would be very doable. Raising orbits could be done either as a single unit or in pieces, I consider the latter more likely as not everything would necessarily be decom at the same time. Once they are there, they could either be used on international programs, NASA projects, or you could sell off the components like a land-based scrap yard to commercial entities. The mass is already up there, at least some of it is going to have value (like an antenna or certain wiring assemblies.) DARPA's Phoenix program was thinking along similar lines.Obviously some modules are going to be useful for little more than scrap, but even that could be of use eventually. Someone might even buy a module for on-orbit storage.

To me planetary defense means defending the planet from some extraterrestrial threat, so that means the govts of the world are aware that humans are not alone in the Universe and that the aliens are/may be hostile.

Space is big and full of planets, who knows what's really out there or if interstellar travel is really just a pipe dream. But, space is also full of things moving very fast. Things that could hit a burgeoning planet and end an era of reptilian life, for example.

You can't simply extend the ISS through 2030 by declaration. Modules and systems were designed within finite lifespan. Things like airlocks have a maximum safe number of cycles. Boeing the primary contractor has only certified the stations primary system through 2028. Systems break and wear out. The portion of payload mass devoted to spare parts is rising each year.

Congress is setting NASA up for a failure, one they will turn around and blame NASA for when someone is hurt or killed.

There is also the small issue of the Russians. They haven't committed to a ISS presence beyond 2024 and with commercial resupply and commercial crew killing their ability to sell Soyuz and Progress flights their costs are rising while their space budget and revenue offsets from NASA are falling. We have already excluded them from Gateway and our lunar ambitions (not saying that is bad) so they have no real reason to work with us at this point in order to gain future "business".

I am all for maintaining a presence in LEO through 2030 or 2130 but there needs to be money to address the real challenges involved with the ISS is getting long in the tooth and is essentially two incomplete stations bolted together and at least our half can't work independently as-is.

Could we just put another airlock compartment on the existing one and leave the old doors open? I realize that's only one of myriad problems, but lots of things (like nuclear power plants) get their lives lengthened beyond the design.

The airlock doesn't have a docking port on the exterior hatch. You could however replace the airlock with a replacement airlock. Need to come up with a way to get new airlock on station and a disposal/deorbit plan for the old airlock although temporarily you could likely attach it to any of the common berthing adapters and just leave it closed.

Send up a coil of bailing wire with the replacement and tie the old one to the same cargo craft that brought the replacement up and send it down for incineration like the rest of the trash they get rid of.

I believe the idea is that you need to look outward, to pick up the reflection of things further out than you, for increased sensitivity. You want to be inside Earth's orbit, so you can see things in Earth's orbit. You want to remain close to Earth for fast communications. That restricts you to ESL1.

You're looking for emission if you're using IR telescopes. If you were looking for reflection you'd look in the visible.

Reflection or emission, you want to pick up the bright/hot side facing the Sun. I can't come up with any other reason why you would want to sit at L1 for this.

They've got to get away from the surface of the earth to avoid the thermal load from its reflected light. At which point you've got to choose somewhere to go. Any of the Lagrange points allow constant communication with earth. L1 is inside and allows you to see the hot spots as you suggest so maybe there's some small advantage there. However, most of the asteroids are usually outside the earth's orbit most of the time or you can see their inside face when looking across the orbital plane. Maybe L1 is just the cheapest Lagrange point to get to from a delta-v budget. I don't know.

The further out you go, the more costly data transmission gets. If it were only the thermal loads, it would be a lot easier to just drift about in some HEO.

If it's cryo-cooled, it would be better to just put it in LEO. WISE was in a nearly circular orbit of ~490km. The cryogen for the primary mission only lasted about 10 months, though.

Is this part of a bipartisan commitment to Human Space Flight, or is it just another case of extending existing contracts, for client companies and Nasa programmes taking place in centres in the home state of these senators? Because there's been a lot of that over the years.

there have been a lot of posts about how you can't just decree for the space station to last beyond a certain point, and any new ISS is going to take a long time to go from announcement, to operation. It would seem that a bipartisan commitment to an orbital space station would have included a plan for the next step, that could kickstart the development of commercial space stations, much as the Commercial cargo and crew programmes have revolutionized the launch industry.

Perhaps the best use that could be made of the ISS over the remainder of its life is to act as an orbital test bed for new modules, solicited by NASA and their partners to form the next space station. Perhaps a competition, with partial development funding to provide space station modules, which The people running this ISS 2 will rent from the providers, with contracts to operate their own module.

This would enable companies to develop, build, launch and operate modules, gaining experience, and a track record, and the NASA stamp of approval, that would enable them to move on to create their own space stations for companies or scientific institutions, It could act as the missing step between mock ups of inflatable space stations in hangars, to actual destinations in LEO.

The ISS is amazing in so many ways, but it seems that so much time is spent repairing it that we don't seem to be maximizing its potential, and we've learned a lot from operating it, and technology has moved on, as has the structure of the whole industry. It's time to iterate.

I wish it could be possible to fasten a booster to the ISS and crash it on the Moon to use it as a source of materials. It's such a waste to burn it in the atmosphere.

I wonder what it would take to put the ISS in orbit around the moon. I think that would be a pretty neat place to store it until we find a better use than fireball.

TLI (trans lunar injection) is about 3.2 km/s and LOI (lunar orbit insertion) is about 1km/s. The ISS masses 420t.

With a hypergolic motor you might get 320s specific impulse in vacuum. To get the ballpark figure lets pretend the engine and tankage is massless.

m0 = m1 * e^(-dv/ve)

m0 = 420t * e^( 3200 / (320*9.8))m0 = 1165t

so prop would be 745t. Tankage is going to be around 5% so lets assume dry mass of 45t for the departure stage mass.

That moves m1 up to 465tm0 = 465t * e^( 3200 / (320*9.8))m0 = 1290t

prop mass is 825t. So a hypergolic departure stage with a dry mass of 45t and prop mass of 825t could put the ISS into orbit around the moon. Cryogneics (methalox or hydrolox) would be less prop mass but you would need to deal with storing large amounts of cryogenic propellants for possibly a fairly long time.

The 3200 in the equation was for TLI. Did you leave out the mass for the fuel LOI?

I believe the idea is that you need to look outward, to pick up the reflection of things further out than you, for increased sensitivity. You want to be inside Earth's orbit, so you can see things in Earth's orbit. You want to remain close to Earth for fast communications. That restricts you to ESL1.

You're looking for emission if you're using IR telescopes. If you were looking for reflection you'd look in the visible.

Correct.

The reason to be at L1 and looking outward is so you can detect objects closer to the sun than earth, without the sun getting in the way.

Edit to add: This is by far the class of potentially dangerous objects we have the least knowledge of, and thus currently represents the greatest danger.

Didn't realize we were talking about passively cooled IR detectors. Yeah, that's going to have to get away from the earth. It would be better if we could just crank the electrical supply to 11 and actively cool. But that might require high temperature radiator tech that hasn't been developed yet.

The other option is to use a cryo-cooled detector. The main downside is mission duration, but if you're mass-producing them, it might not matter.

If SpaceX can drop off a dozen or so every Starlink launch you might accept only a two year lifespan.

Remember this is Starship we're talking about here -- wasting payload capacity is okay, and optimizing launch costs for complex space observatories not that important. You'd want to make sure the cost of the satellite dispenser and whatever changes to the telescopes you need to pack them in is worth it compared to just launching more often.

Didn't realize we were talking about passively cooled IR detectors. Yeah, that's going to have to get away from the earth. It would be better if we could just crank the electrical supply to 11 and actively cool. But that might require high temperature radiator tech that hasn't been developed yet.

The other option is to use a cryo-cooled detector. The main downside is mission duration, but if you're mass-producing them, it might not matter.

If SpaceX can drop off a dozen or so every Starlink launch you might accept only a two year lifespan.

Remember this is Starship we're talking about here -- wasting payload capacity is okay, and optimizing launch costs for complex space observatories not that important. You'd want to make sure the cost of the satellite dispenser and whatever changes to the telescopes you need to pack them in is worth it compared to just launching more often.

Maybe that's Elon's goodwill gesture to the astronomy community in exchange for putting up 10-40 thousand new satellites. A few thousand of them will be telescopes of various wavelength sensitivities.

I feel like this is an attempt to lock NASA spending into existing contractors before it becomes too obvious that the ISS is about to become completely obsolete. Much like the Shuttle the ISS is one of those good ideas that got bogged down and fossilized and never delivered on its promises. There should have been a spin grav module to test the effects of long term lunar or Martian gravity levels, there should have been improved spacesuits and tools for working outside in space. There should have been raw materials for astronauts to experiment on actually building stuff in space, and then components for them to build into much larger modules than could be launched in one piece.

Well before 2030 it should be possible to rent a Starship in orbit to use as a space station for months at a time for a fraction of what the ISS costs to run, with periodic returns to earth for refurbishment and incremental upgrades. Hopefully that will spur somebody to do some serious work on orbital construction so that we can finally have a proper rotating space station like Tsiolkovsky first envisioned over a century ago. Such a station would let scientists run experiments in zero G labs but spend all of their down time under spin gravity to avoid negative health effects. It would allow large orbital clean rooms where telescopes much larger than the JWST could be assembled for a fraction of the cost of trying to make a telescope than can handle the G forces of launch and then unfold with perfect precision while still fitting within a tiny mass budget.

The ISS should have been merely a stepping stone on the path to much better things, instead politics and fear of failure have turned it into an endpoint in itself, whose goal is merely to keep humans existing in space rather than allowing us to actually accomplish things there.